3 for 3!

It all started back in 2006 when a friend introduced me and some other friends to a little something called Joy School and we decided to form a group with all of our adorable 3-year-olds.

Joy Schoolers and friends at the zoo October 2006

Enjoying winter

Backyard fun (that's little Silly back there with the hula hoop)

Graduation!

I just love the look on Cakes's face in this picture. Mrs. J took it upon herself to make each of the children a scrapbook of all our Joy School adventures. Just one thing that makes her awesome.

It was so much fun; the kids loved it and all of us moms loved it.

Fast forward to 2010; I had tried to get a group together when Silly was 3, but it just didn't work out. I signed him up for WMF preschool when he was 4, but just couldn't give up on Joy School, so I begged and pleaded with a couple of my friends and made it work with preschool three days a week and Joy School the other two.

This was his picture on the Joy School house all year. We had lots of fun once again and then one more graduation. 

I think those pants were ruined after that, but clearly he had a good time.

And finally, yesterday, Bubba graduated from Joy School. I am so incredibly thankful for the mom who introduced me to Joy School and all the many moms who have helped me give this experience to all three of my kids. I absolutely love it and recommend Joy School to anyone with preschoolers!

Finger painting with pudding

sandbox at the pumpkin patch

Our Halloween party

Christmas party

valentine's day

our class

my newest Joy School graduate

I didn't think he would actually give me a kiss in front of an audience, but he did. :-)

My favorite thing each year was making their About Me books, and I am so happy I have one for each of them, especially their little shadow profiles inside.

And last but not least, after creating it in my head during Cakes's Joy School year, and cutting out the pieces for Silly's I spent all day Saturday finally sewing my family flag!

the star

the anchor, complete with chain made of the musk ox yarn I bought in Alaska and have been saving for something cool

Our family flag

I need to add some words there in the empty spot, but I haven't decided what yet. I'm just glad it isn't full of pins anymore!

Hooray for Joy School!

Bubba had a Birthday

Bubba turned 4 early last month. I can't recall ever seeing a kid so excited about turning a particular age, but he seems sure that 4 is the coolest age ever. We made a deal before his birthday; I agreed to stop calling him a baby, and he agreed to stop asking me to carry him around everywhere. I do occasionally forget, but he quickly reminds me.

For a long time he told me he wanted the same cake as last year, but then he happened to see a picture of a bulldozer cake somewhere, and that changed his mind. Making cakes makes me so nervous and after every birthday I swear I'm going to take a cake decorating class so I actually know what I'm doing instead of just making it up as I go along. Still hasn't happened! I actually ended up making 2 cakes.

I used Whoppers, Oreos, yellow M&Ms, black licorice and Fruit by the Foot. Scott always thinks I'm a little nuts and over the top when I make these things.

Turns out crushed Oreos and Whoppers together make pretty cool dirt.

We had a near disaster Saturday morning; the cakes were on the counter and Silly suddenly decided to climb onto the counter and nearly put his knee in one of the cakes. I definitely yelled, something along the lines of "Get down right now!" Crazy boy.

I am lame and did not take any pictures of the party kids playing before we got to cake and presents. Bubba saw this idea in Family Fun that he wanted to do, I tore out the page and saved it, then handed it and a roll of tape to Scott and told him that was his job. He really didn't want to do it, mostly because he didn't want to put tape all over the floor and ruin something, but once he got started he did an awesome job.

The kids all had a blast with it. We had a whole pile of cars there on the floor and most of the kids walked in the door and sat right down to play. I also made some different kinds of homemade playdoh and had all our playdoh tools out on the kitchen table. The kids had fun with that too. And I bought some little snack containers so the kids could take some playdoh home.

After some play time it was on to cake!

I just showed Scott all of these pictures and asked him if just sometimes he could get all of me in the picture. There are never any pictures of me because he always chops me up.

I told several people that Bubba really likes Spiderman, but didn't have any Spiderman stuff, other than a shirt and a hat, so he got lots of Spidey stuff, which made him perfectly happy. He actually loved everything he got for his birthday, even the clothes, which is saying something.

He had a great birthday, and the answer to everything now is "Because I'm 4." I actually used it against him a few weeks ago when he was asked to give the scripture in Primary. He is pretty slow to warm up to new people and has only been in Primary since the beginning of the year and doesn't love it yet. I kept reminding him that big 4 year old boys can go up to the microphone and say the scripture. It worked! He still didn't like it, and when he doesn't really want to talk he talks out of the side of his mouth, but he did actually say all the words. Good job, Bubba!

Buttons and Dots

Bubba likes to turn off the car and then push the button to close the garage whenever we get home. We don't have a garage door opener in the car; we use the programmable buttons above the dashboard. And so it was yesterday, we returned home from Joy School and Bubba asked to turn off the car and close the garage. He pushed the button and said, "I push the one-dot button. The two-dot button is for the green house." (By "green house" he means our old house.) I asked him what the three-dot button was for and he stops and thinks for a few seconds, then says, "I will tell you what the three-dot button is for when we move to another house." Ha! Ain't gonna happen, little dude.

Then, last night, I'm driving Cakes to swim team practice and I tell her that little story. The conversation:
C - What voice did he use when he said that?
Me - Just his regular Bubba voice, not his whiny voice, silly voice or mumble voice.
C - I'm trying to imagine the way he said it.
M - It's my fault Bubba mumbles, and it's Papop's fault that I mumble. He used to say to me sometimes, "Shauna, you're mumbling" and I would say, "Yeah, where do you think I got it from, Dad?" or "Whose fault is that?" But there are worse things to inherit from your parents.
C - Like what?
M - Well, I could have had ugly parents, and inherited that!
C - Oh yeah, that definitely happened to somebody on my bus.
She goes on the describe a rather odd looking woman, but somewhere in the midst of that description she throws in, "Mamie is definitely prettier than that lady" (I guess confirming that I did not inherit any ugliness from my mom?) and later, after she talked about the woman's clothes, "Oh, and even better, Mamie wears clothes that are appropriate for her age."

I'm retelling all of this to Scott as we're getting into bed for the night. He stopped me when I got to the part about mumbling and said, "Wait - you're admitting that you mumble? But you get mad at me every time I say I can't understand you." I ignored that comment. But he thought what Bubba and Cakes said was hilarious, and he asked me what I'm doing to our kids to make them come up with such things...

Post Valentine's Day Post

I decided after Christmas that as far as decorations, Christmas is completely out of control and all of the other holidays are sadly lacking, so I actually did some things I found on Pinterest to add to the three Valentine decorations we had. Imagine that!

I made a yarn wreath for the front door. I thought the hard part would be cutting the felt hearts, but that was pretty fast and easy; the time consuming part was wrapping the yarn around and around and around and around and around to cover the whole wreath form. And then, cute as it is, it does not fit into the wreath hook, so I had to tie some ribbon around it. The kids were getting on me because according to them, all things Valentine need some red, so I used red ribbon to appease them.

Bubba and I made some paper heart chains. He was my official assistant with the paper cutter and the stapler, and he approved my color combinations. We discovered (through some trial and error) that they do much better lying on something (table, mantle) rather than trying to hang them up, because then the chain gets stretched out and they don't look much like hearts anymore.

 

The kids and I made Valentines for all of their friends/classmates using some ideas from Family Fun. They had quite a bit of fun using gel pens to make the outer space Valentines. Their pictures got more and more elaborate, going from lots of stars with a planet here and there to adding aliens, space craft, meteors, and constellations. I did not get a whole lot of help with the fans though. Cakes did a little bit of folding and gluing, and this time Bubba was my glue and rubber band assistant.






Silly's art work



Cakes's artwork; she said all of the bouncy balls fell out by the time she went to hand them out, but it turned out to be a good thing because then her friends just told her what color they wanted.



And we did go shoe shopping, although I didn't find anything for myself.  The boys all got new sneakers. Cakes has more shoes than the rest of us put together, so no shoes for her, but I did let her pick out some fun socks. Bubba's feet are huge! Scott pulled out some 12.5 sneakers, and I told him to put them back, there was no way they would fit my little Bubba - uh, wrong. He'll be 4 in two weeks. I keep warning him that after he turns 4 I won't carry him anymore, but I think he and I both know that is a lie.